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JTA chosen for 2015 WEEE compliance fee mechanism

The Joint Trade Association (JTA) has been chosen to operate the UK’s waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) compliance fee mechanism for a second year running, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has announced.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid has today (1 February) approved the proposal submitted by the JTA, a group of nine trade associations from the electrotechnical sector. Mazars LLP has been chosen to administer the carrying out of the compliance fee for 2015.

The JTA consists of trade associations AMDEA, BEAMA, BTHA, EEF, GAMBICA, LIA, PETMA, SEAMA and techUK. In addition, three producer compliance schemes (PCSs) contribute to its work. The association estimates that its combined membership accounts for approximately 90 per cent of the WEEE producer obligation in the UK.

Compliance fee

As part of the regulations, household WEEE collection targets are set for PCSs. Any scheme that doesn’t meet its collection target may choose to pay a compliance fee to meet the cost of financing obligations. This is designed to discourage PCSs from collecting WEEE ‘significantly above their targets’ and then ‘seeking to sell that surplus at excessive prices to those PCSs that are short of their target amount’.

In 2014, the mechanism used different compliance schemes for each WEEE stream, with fees based on the average direct cost of transport and treatment for each stream and a requirement for only PCSs needing to pay a fee to supply cost data – as opposed to mandating all PCSs to provide it.

Three proposals were received for the 2015 reporting period. The two unsuccessful applications were submitted by Valpak and a seven-scheme group, which included Advantage Waste Brokers, Dataserv Group, DHL WEEE Compliance, Veolia WEEE Compliance, Wastepack/Electrolink, WeeeCare and WE3 Compliance.

PCSs that have not reached their collection targets will have until 31 March to pay the compliance fee calculated using the JTA methodology.

Robust, workable, and economically sound

Commenting on the news, JTA Chairman Richard Hughes, who is also technical manager at AMDEA, said: “We are delighted by this news. The JTA has worked very hard to ensure that our proposal was robust, workable, and economically sound.

“To help us achieve this we used two fully independent professional economic consultancy groups. FTI consulting developed the formula upon which the calculation method is based and Frontier Economics then reviewed the fee calculation methodology and added some further enhancements in the light of the previous year’s experience.”

Susanne Baker, Head of Environment & Compliance at techUK, added: “We are pleased that the government has chosen to implement a compliance fee. The JTA is fully committed to the removal of red tape in the WEEE system, and the availability of a correctly formulated compliance fee is an important element in achieving this.

“The JTA has again nominated Mazars, one of the UK’s top 10 accountancy firms, as the administrator of the fee. PCSs can therefore be confident that where they choose to use the fee, their applications will be handled efficiently.”

More information about how to access the fee will be available shortly. However, any PCSs wishing to access the fee can register their interest at Weeecompliancefee@mazars.co.uk.